Alzheimer`s Center Provides At-home Counseling

Maxine Lebowitz understands there are people who don`t like or can`t get to support groups.

But that doesn`t mean that they don`t need help.

So Lebowitz, a licensed mental health counselor with the Alzheimer`s Family Center in Margate, makes house calls.

``Most of the people I see are very loving and devoted to their sick family members,`` said Lebowitz, who offers at-home therapy sessions for spouses or relatives caring for Alzheimer`s patients. ``But how much can you take, when mom or your husband is yelling at you all the time, or is dependent on you for everything?``

For Kathy Karins, the final straw was when her mother began verbally abusing Chris, Karins` son.

Chris, 10, has round dark eyes and a demeanor more solemn than most young boys. His grandmother has Alzheimer`s disease and has lived in a converted Florida room in the Karinses` Fort Lauderdale home for two years.

For some reason that no one can fathom, Chris has been the target of his grandmother`s anger since the neurological disorder began taking hold four years ago. Last week, she woke up the family in the middle of the night, shrieking that Chris had sneaked into her bedroom and kicked her. Karins brought Chris into her bedroom and locked the door, terrified that her enraged mother would hurt her son.

The demented behavior that turns a mother into a monster ``can totally drain you,`` said Karins, an office manager for a Fort Lauderdale lawyer. Karins takes a late lunch hour once every other week so she, and sometimes Chris, can meet with Lebowitz at their home.

Through Lebowitz`s sessions, Chris now realizes his grandmother is not cruel but in the grips of an illness that has twisted her reason.

Said Chris: ``Most grownups are supposed to set an example, but I can`t even talk to Grandma because she`s messed up in the head. Sometimes when she reads the magazine, she reads it upside down.``

The Karins are typical of about 40 percent of Lebowitz`s clients; they are a working family with at least one child as well as an aging parent living with them. The other 60 percent are senior citizens with a spouse who has the disease, which affects more than 40,000 Broward County residents.

The family center offers a variety of programs for people caring for an Alzheimer`s patient, either in their own home or a nursing home. The private, non-profit corporation is supported by government funds and private fund- raisers, such as a golf tournament planned for May.

At-home counseling began as a part-time project three years ago, and now serves 33 people on a full-time basis. There is no charge and sessions are weekly or every other week, depending on the needs of the family.

Center Director Shelley Rabbach said the counseling program has been a special blessing to seniors, who often don`t have transportation or can`t find anyone to watch their spouse. It`s also brought in caregivers who felt there was a stigma attached to group therapy.

``We`re all taught as children not to do our dirty laundry in public. Some people don`t want to go to a support group and talk about their troubles, or have to listen to what other people are going through,`` Rabbach said.

The assistance is not intended to be indefinite and Lebowitz said the average client is ready to go on alone after about 16 sessions. Emergency intervention also is not a goal: ``If someone tells us they are living on the edge and can`t take it any more, we call a crisis line,`` Rabbach said.

The strength of the at-home program, is that it can snare people before they reach that edge. ``People need to realize they can`t do it alone,`` Rabbach said.